Early life antibiotic exposure affects pancreatic islet development and metabolic regulation

Childhood antibiotic exposure has been recently linked with increased risk of metabolic disease later in life. A better understanding of this association would potentially provide strategies to reduce the childhood chronic disease epidemic. Therefore, we explored the underlying mechanisms using a swine model that better mimics human infants than rodents, and demonstrated that early life antibiotic exposure affects glucose metabolism 5 weeks after antibiotic withdrawal, which was associated with changes in pancreatic development. Antibiotics exerted a transient impact on postnatal gut microbiota colonization and microbial metabolite production, yet changes in the expression of key genes involved in short-chain fatty acid signaling and pancreatic development were detected in later life. These findings suggest a programming effect of early life antibiotic exposure that merits further investigation.